The Barnes storyline has slowly been coming to its inevitable conclusion, and we get a pretty definitive end to his story arc in “Executioner.”

Gotham, as I’m sure just about everyone knows, is a pretty gruesome place. But, the first scene is pretty shockingly so. Barnes has three people, who end up being criminals, strung up and ready to be hanged. He reads them their crimes and then decides to be judge, jury and executioner. He kicks the chairs out from under them, and they all hang to death.

Even though Barnes has already thrown someone through a bathroom wall, it was still weird seeing him go through with this, even being infected with Alice’s blood. Barnes was the perfect captain at GCPD. Everything was by the books and even when Harvey and Jim wanted to use some off-the-book tactics, Barnes was staunchly against it and wouldn’t even entertain the idea..

The scene where Barnes convinces Jim to go with him, and only him, on a call to a mob boss’s location ratchets up the intensity. Since Barnes is quite intelligent, he knows that Jim is investigating him for Simon’s murder. But Barnes, being the way he is, tries to rationalize that he is doing all of this for the good of Gotham. He even goes as far as saying that they should team up and cleanup Gotham together.

The two are such great characters because they have been been in similar predicaments. Jim actually went all the way and took out Galvan, and him explaining to Barnes that it haunts him everyday is some nice characterization for the journey through which Jim has been during this series’ run thus far. Jim eventually does take Barnes in, and he is then admitted to Arkham where he repeatedly just says, “guilty.”

This features quite a big, supposed end, to the Barnes/Tetch storyline, but I’m not sure that is the case. Gotham does a great job of leaving things open just enough so that they can make a return in the future. If they do indeed end that story, it will be interesting to see how our latest villains will fill that void.

Although Bruce or Selina haven’t had any large storylines recently, it appears that is going to change quite substantially. The duo gets into quite the predicament after Ivy decides to stroll back into town. Her character is so interesting because she has the thought process of someone in her early teens (or earlier), but has the looks of someone much older. With her new looks, she stepped up her game and has been stealing things from guys left and right, but she steals something that much more dangerous people want.

She steals a large jewel, and Selina’s place gets completely ransacked by guys wearing metal mouth masks (aka the Whisper Gang). Bruce agrees to buy it from her so that they can return it, and she hilariously asks for $1,000, when in reality it appears to be worth much much more. But, when they go to take it back, the person she stole it from has an arrow in his eye. Out of anger, she throws it and finds that it is actually a key.

I enjoy the way that they kicked off the storyline with The Whisper Gang the same episode they tied up the Tetch/Barnes storyline. I generally hate when new storylines are created by themselves, and this instance seemed to give it just enough room to breathe without throwing it all into our laps in one quick episode. The Bruce-Selina love story continues to provide some hilarious moments, especially when Ivy says that they are a couple now and Bruce says yes while Selina says no.

The final subplot that carries within it some serious consequences was that of Isabella’s death. Unsurprisingly, Nygma decides to dig into her strange death, since it only happened four blocks from her house. He finds that, of course, the brake lines were cut, and GCPD didn’t even really investigate it. So, he turns to Cobblepot so that he can help to punish the person he believes is responsible. Nygma believes Butch is the one, or does he? I feel like Nygma is far too smart to believe that it was Butch and that he is just waiting for Cobblepot to make a mistake so he can prove that it was Cobblepot.

Editor's Rating

Overall–100%

This show just keeps hitting it out of the park. It’s much harder to find a character I don’t like than one that I do. The Tetch/Barnes storyline lasted just long enough, and we finally got to see Jim Gordon become the Jim we know of currently. I was kind of iffy of them bringing back Ivy and focusing more on the story with Ivy, Bruce and Selina, but I am genuinely interested in the show runners adding the Whisper Gang into the mix.

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Dual Pixels is more than just an organization, it's a culture. The interactive arts are our passion, this includes gaming and innovations brought forward with technology. The beauty of being an independent organization is the fact that we have the opportunity to bring back the enthusiasm in a gaming industry which is becoming increasingly corporate and stale. The Dual Pixels brand is full of perspective hence the reason why we also go by the appellation "The Digital Crossover".